


Peaceful Protest

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 21:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16437224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Naomi has strong feelings about the various law-enforcement agencies





	Peaceful Protest

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the SentinelThursday prompt 'central'

Peaceful Protest

by Bluewolf

Naomi's view of the wrongs inflicted on the world's population by its politicians was fairly extreme. She regarded armies and all law-enforcing agencies such as the police as jack-booted thugs who enjoyed wielding their muscles suppressing the public who dared to protest against the wrongs inflicted on the world by the rich, and the politicians they supported.

And there was little the general population could do except protest, with little expectation of accomplishing anything.

Peaceful protest was central to Naomi's beliefs.

Being one of dozens - sometimes hundreds - of protesters sitting on a road, blocking the advance of vehicles... so satisfying! And as long as they didn't resist arrest, they couldn't realistically be charged with anything.

"I was just sitting there, your honor!" Who could be sent to prison for that? Not even the politicians' lackeys could be so unreasonable!

Of course, occasionally some of them were imprisoned - and the protesters unfortunate enough to spend time in prison were treated as heroes by their friends when they were released.

Even though newspaper reporters were usually regarded by Naomi and her friends as lackeys of the rich, they weren't above using a newspaper to make their point. On one occasion when Naomi (who had been staying at a commune) was arrested and Blair was put into a foster home by Social Services, her friends bombarded the local paper with letters regarding the cruelty of separating a mother from her child, and sending that child to live with strangers - suggesting that it would have been better to leave him with the women in the commune, women he knew. (Blair himself reacted by withdrawing into himself, being so quiet he was almost invisible and so well-behaved that he knew there was no way the adults in the foster home could claim that commune life had made him unruly.)

It had been a short prison sentence - one given as a kind of warning to everyone in the commune - and when Naomi went to retrieve Blair he made it clear that he was maybe shy in the presence of strangers, but outgoing enough with people he knew.

Blair himself was arrested once, a few years later - along with several of his friends. They had chained themselves to trees, in protest against the unnecessary destruction of a mature forest (and the loss of habitat of the animals who lived in it). Although the landowner insisted that he was going to replant the area, they weren't convinced he would, but in any case they didn't see any point in clear-felling the entire hillside. Felling segments of it, possibly, renewing the entire woodland over several years, could be called good land management; they accepted that - but not the felling of an entire mature forest.

They weren't sent to prison, but Naomi was very proud of Blair and the stance he (and his friends) had taken.

But a few years later... Blair ended up as a civilian ride along with a detective in Cascade's Major Crime unit.

Naomi was horrified. She liked Jim well enough when she met him... but seeing her son working with - living with - a pig... having apparently totally abandoned the distrust of Authority that she had always had, and tried to instil in him...

How could he have abandoned the beliefs he had held for so long?

Blair tried to explain that his police friends were protecting a sometimes gullible public from criminals who might steal their property (Naomi was unsympathetic; apart from a few clothes, possessions were unnecessary) or get their children hooked on drugs. Naomi was still unsympathetic; they should have taught their children more sense - as she had done. Following her example, Blair had never experimented with drugs.

Finally Naomi left Cascade to resume her carefree world wandering, though she returned occasionally to visit Blair.

And then one day she saw - thought she saw - a chance to separate Blair from his pig friends. She was more computer savvy than Blair had realized, and she had several times, unbeknownst to him, had access to his computer; she knew the subject of his dissertation, and deliberately sent it to her editor friend at Berkshire Publishing. Sid's response had been what she'd hoped... Blair's hadn't. She was horrified when he denied his work, lost his position at Rainier... and was offered a full-time job working with the pigs.

After training, he would become what she had always hated; a jackbooted enforcer of the rich, whose beliefs she had always resisted.

She had, she knew, two choices; either disown Blair, or accept that he had become one of the despised enforcers of Authority. And because she loved Blair, she realized that her choice had to be the second option.

She never did understand that her long-held beliefs were wrong, that Authority wasn't always bad.

She just had to live with her unwilling change of attitude.


End file.
